The Evolution of Warfare in the Modern Era
The summer of 2022 marked a pivotal moment for many who found themselves on the front lines of the conflict in Ukraine. For some, it was an opportunity to contribute using affordable technology, such as a DJI Mini II drone, which became a symbol of the evolving nature of warfare. At that time, the hope was that the war would end by the summer, with the possibility of reaching Moscow. This hope was rooted not only in the desire for physical survival but also in the belief that democratic values could prevail over authoritarian regimes. However, the reality of the war soon revealed a different narrative—one that emphasized endurance and attrition over rapid victories.
Russia’s approach to warfare is deeply influenced by historical strategies, particularly those of Aleksandr Svechin, a Russian military theorist who argued that not all wars need to be fought for decisive outcomes. Instead, some conflicts are designed to exhaust the enemy over time. This philosophy aligns with Russia’s current strategy, which focuses on wearing down its adversaries through sustained pressure rather than seeking quick wins. The war in Ukraine has taken on a form that is older than NATO doctrine and even the Cold War, characterized by a slow, methodical approach aimed at outlasting the enemy.
This wasn’t the kind of war many volunteers expected. Western notions of warfare often emphasize rapid maneuvers and decisive engagements. However, the front in Ukraine is anything but linear. It is a vast, shifting landscape filled with overlapping drone zones, artillery kill boxes, and positional skirmishes over areas that no longer exist. Russia doesn’t need to take ground; it needs to deny tempo. Its military doctrine prioritizes endurance over elegance, mass over finesse. What may appear chaotic is, in fact, a calculated strategy designed to wear down the enemy.
Russian military thinking has long diverged from its Western counterparts, not in terms of brutality but in patience. Svechin’s ideas echo throughout Russian history, from Kutuzov’s retreat against Napoleon to Stalin’s defense in 1941. These strategies emphasize strategic depth and the slow erosion of enemy will over sweeping battlefield victories. The current war fits squarely within this lineage, with Russia executing a familiar script that bleeds adversaries slowly while absorbing losses with political indifference.
Despite the myth of Russian military improvisation, the logic of strategic exhaustion remains deeply embedded in its command culture. The General Staff, under figures like Valery Gerasimov, continues to think in terms of “strategic operations in a theater of military action”—a framework designed not for rapid victory, but for shaping conditions over months or even years. Russia’s battlefield decisions often appear clumsy to Western observers, but this is not mere incompetence—it is operational stubbornness rooted in historical precedent.
The West, by contrast, still clings to the fantasy of decisive wars—short, surgical, morally palatable. NATO doctrine, shaped by decades of counterinsurgency and precision warfare, revolves around maneuver, joint fires, and technological overmatch. Victory is imagined as swift: air supremacy followed by rapid ground thrusts, regime change, then reconstruction. Casualties are meant to be minimal, legitimacy preserved. But this model collapses in a war like Ukraine, where the enemy refuses to play by the same rules.
The 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive was not a failure of courage, but of doctrine. Western-trained brigades, equipped with Leopard tanks and Bradleys, were sent into what NATO planners hoped would be a breakthrough campaign—a combined arms blitz designed to rupture Russian lines and reclaim occupied territory. But the assumptions underpinning that plan—maneuver dominance, rapid tempo, air-ground coordination—collapsed in the face of Russian depth. What they met instead were endless minefields, layered trench systems, kill zones triangulated by drones and artillery, and a Russian force that refused to panic.
Now there is an urgent need to define a new warfighting doctrine—one that synthesizes the core principles of both Soviet and NATO schools of thought. This concept, known as Integrated Drone Attrition, involves using drones to fill the void left by conventional airpower and deliver a level of precision once reserved for high-end missile systems or manned aircraft. The shift had been underway long before Operation Spiderweb, which demonstrated that drones could achieve strategic-level effects typically associated with cruise missiles and bombers.
Ukraine has adapted to this new reality by constructing a drone-in-depth defense—a distributed, decentralized network that merges civilian ingenuity with battlefield necessity. At the outer edge, long-range recon drones patrol the contact line, feeding targeting data back to mortar teams and HIMARS batteries. Closer in, FPV drone squads operate in grid-like kill zones, swarming Russian infantry and armor with cheap kamikaze quadcopters. Behind them, electronic warfare teams—often using modified commercial gear—jam incoming drones and suppress enemy UAVs with handheld or vehicle-mounted systems.
These rapid technological shifts—layered atop the enduring brutality of old-school warfare—have made life for the modern soldier nothing short of hell. Drones have collapsed the distinction between front and rear, soldier and civilian, combat and spectacle. The infantryman no longer has hope of protection—armor is obsolete, air defense too slow, and concealment nearly impossible. Attrition has gone digital, with a teenager in a shipping container with an FPV rig able to vaporize a squad and upload it in 4K, turning war into content, death into propaganda, and grief into algorithmic engagement.
